June 14, 2023 • 49 mins
The Sloss Furnaces contain the ghosts of some of the darkest moments in Birmingham’s history. And it’s all still there today, being relived by those who won’t — or can’t — leave it behind.
Special Guest: Kevan Walden
Find out more about Amy's fall tour and upcoming appearances at amybruni.com
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You might say that Birmingham, Alabama, was faded to become
a center of industry, a place made rich by manufacturing
products and shipping them across the globe. But all of
that prosperity came at a cost, a human cost. Birmingham
quickly became a center of iron production, but smelting all
(00:34):
that iron ore was a laborious job that was deathly dangerous.
Men sustained terrible injuries and were sometimes cooked alive from
exposure to the molten iron. And as racial inequity and
hostility toward Black Americans grew, the burden those men bore
became disproportionately more perilous. The sloss furnaces contained the ghosts
(00:57):
of some of the darkest moments in Birmingham history. And
it's all still there today, being relived by those who
won't or can't leave it behind. I'm Amy Bruney, and
this is Haunted Road. When Birmingham was founded in eighteen
(01:20):
seventy one, its planners envisioned a rich future in an
Appalachian Valley in north central Alabama. The city sat at
the crossroads of two railroad lines on one of the
world's richest mineral Deposits hopes to establish a town with
considerable industry were so high that investors in the Ellaton
Land Company, the founding company of the city, named it
(01:43):
after Birmingham, England, the epicenter of the iron industry in
the UK. The plan worked thanks in large part to
Sloss Furnaces, a processing plant that extracted iron from rocks
by superheating the iron ore, converting it into liquid iron,
and cool it into a solid that was then sold
and used for countless purposes. Sloss Furnaces was built in
(02:06):
eighteen eighty one, named after Colonel James Withers Sloss, one
of Birmingham's founding fathers. Sloss played an important role in
the founding of the city because he convinced a major
railroad of the day to lay tracks through the fledgling town.
In its first year, Sloss Furnaces sold twenty four thousand
tons of iron. Along with other manufacturing plants, Sloss became
(02:30):
so profitable so rapidly that Birmingham became known as Magic City,
a nickname that came from the fact that the city
grew so quickly it seemed to be by magic. By
the mid eighteen eighties, Birmingham was a bona fide manufacturing hub.
Demand grew so quickly that its owners began construction on
a second furnace just a year after its opening. Combined,
(02:53):
the furnaces could produce over two hundred and fifty tons
of iron a day. Slas Furnaces National Historic Landmark describes
the physical structure sixty feet high and eighteen feet in diameter.
Sloss's new Whitwell stoves were the first of their type
ever built in Birmingham and were comparable to similar equipment
(03:14):
used in the North. Local observers were proud that much
of the machinery used by Slass's new furnaces would be
of Southern manufacture. It included two blowing engines and ten
boilers thirty feet long and forty six inches in diameter.
According to the podcast Homespun Haunts, pig iron, the main
product of the furnaces, gets its name from the shape
(03:36):
of the cooling trenches the workers would dump the molten
iron into cool These trenches looked like a sow feeding
piglets in eighteen eighty three, Sloss Furnaces won a bronze
medal for the best pig Iron at the Louisville Exhibition.
Iron was extracted in the two furnaces through a hot,
dangerous process. As the Slass Furnaces Tour describes, Iron ore, limestone, coke,
(04:02):
and hot air were continuously fed into the furnace, which
would reach temperatures of thirty eight hundred degrees. As the
materials moved down and hot air moved up in the furnace,
two products accumulated in the bottom or hearth, molten iron
and slag. The iron and slag were withdrawn or tapped
through two holes called notches. About every four hours, the
(04:24):
iron notch, located at the base of the furnace was opened,
allowing the molten iron to flow out of the furnace.
In addition to the furnaces themselves, the plant contained many
more buildings, including ten boilers that would burn waste gas
created inside the furnace during the iron making process, and
a pyrometer house which contained the machines that measured temperature
(04:47):
in the furnaces. According to the Slass Furnaces Tour, this
building is the strongest built building on the site and
would be used to protect the workers if anything went
seriously wrong with the furnace. This the use of the
pyrometer house prompted the workers to call it the dog house,
saying the furnace would get mad at them and put
them in the doghouse. Those furnaces were powered by blowing engines.
(05:11):
As the tour describes, the blowing engines stand over thirty
feet tall and turned flywheels twenty feet in diameter at
a rate of about thirty revolutions per minute. Each engine
had a steam cylinder on the bottom and an air
cylinder on the top. Steam drove the piston in the
steam cylinder up and down, in turn driving the piston
(05:32):
in the air cylinder. The moving piston pulled in air,
compressed it, and pushed it out. These generated a large
amount of noise. The decibel level would compare to that
of standing front row at a rock concert. Cast sheds
cover the areas where iron was poured from the furnaces
and then cooled into pigs. According to industrial archaeology, the
(05:55):
work of breaking and carrying the newly cast pigs was arduous, hot,
and dangerous. Workers wore wooden shoes in order to protect
their feet from being scorched by the liquid iron, and
had to work at a rapid pace to clear the
shed for the next opening of a furnace notch. The
furnaces didn't just generate significant income for Birmingham. Visiting them
(06:17):
was a pastime for locals. The road to the plant
has significant shoulders so that people could gather and watch
the plant's workings at a safe distance. As Robin MacDonald
wrote in the Anniston Star, people gathered in the smoke,
the fumes, and the steam each night along the viaduct
to watch molten iron and burning slag pour from the
(06:38):
nearby furnace mouths. Some brought their dates, some brought their children.
Some came on Sunday afternoon furnus party picnics. Other Southern
cities had undeniable segregation problems in racial tensions, but Birmingham
had a specially severe and distinct racial division. Martin Luther
(07:01):
King Junior once described Birmingham as the most segregated city
in America. By the mid twentieth century, Birmingham became notorious
for its segregation. This included a series of racially motivated bombings,
most famously the nineteen sixty three bombing of the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church, which killed four young black girls. Earlier
(07:23):
that year, during the Birmingham Campaign, a massive desegregation action,
the city's Public Safety Commissioner, Eugene bull Conner, oversaw the
use of extreme force against nonviolent protesters, generating worldwide outrage.
These protests were when Martin Luther King Junior was arrested
and wrote his famous letter from Birmingham jail. The manufacturing industry,
(07:49):
including Sloss Furnaces, was highly segregated until the nineteen sixties.
Workers at Sloss were required to keep everything separate. They
bathed in separate bathhouses, punched separate time clocks, and stayed
in separate company housing. As Karen Utts wrote in the
Alabama Humanities Alliance, between nineteen hundred and nineteen fifty, Slass
(08:11):
Furnaces maintained company houses throughout Birmingham's Industrial District. Sloss Quarters,
the forty eight houses adjacent to city Furnaces were designed
specifically for African American workers. They were typical shotgun style structures,
with two rooms set on foundation posts and no indoor plumbing.
Until the nineteen thirties. While not a companied town in
(08:34):
the strictest sense. The quarters contained a doctor's office, a commissary,
and offered numerous neighborhood gatherings, including watermelon cuttings, suppers, dancing,
and ball games. By the turn of the century, Birmingham's
iron and steel workforce was sixty five percent black, a
number that would climb to seventy five percent by nineteen ten.
(08:56):
Black employees were only offered the most perilous jobs in
air dangerous industry. Whites populated all the managerial and scientific
roles of the furnaces, while black workers were relegated to
lower paying risk year rolls. There were various ways to
die in the furnaces, including being crushed by an elevator
(09:18):
full of ore like William Mitchell in eighteen eighty nine,
overcome by gas like Julian Wood in eighteen ninety one,
buried in coal from a coal shoot like Levitigus span
in eighteen ninety two, hit in the head with a
bucket of bricks like will Buchanan in eighteen ninety seven,
or simply being found dead on coke oven like David
(09:41):
Tuck in eighteen ninety nine. In November eighteen eighty two,
less than a year after it opened. A horrific accident
took place at Sloss Furnaces. Two black workers, Alec King
and Bob Mayfield, had been lowered into one of the
furnaces stacks in order to clean off a scaffold, a
build up of coke and ore that caused it to malfunction.
(10:03):
When the scaffold gave way, it sent up a pillar
of smoke and ash, suffocating the men and causing them
to fall into the fire of the furnace. One local newspaper,
whose reporter was on scene as their bodies were recovered,
described a truly nightmarish sight in an article headlined Another
Furnace Horror. The reporter wrote, after removing a quantity of
(10:27):
slag and ore, they drew out the charred and blackened
remains of what had been only a few moments before
two living beings. The bodies were a ghastly and revolting sight.
The skulls were bleached white, The arms of both were
drawn up above the heads, the fingers were clenched tight,
and only small particles of charred flesh remained on blackened bones.
(10:49):
It was a scene that was indescribably horrible. The article
ran directly next to a report of a man's suicide
by jumping into nearby Alice furnace. In February eighteen ninety two,
an accident notable enough to make the New York Times
took place at Sloss Furnaces. A scaffold collapse caused eight
(11:10):
men to fall fifty eight feet two. John Stanton and
Jake Ritchie, both white mechanics in their early twenties, were
killed instantly. A contemporary report in The Daily Advertiser described
Richie's head as being mashed into a jelly. The other
six men, who were both white and black, were all injured,
five severely. Their injuries ranged from broken limbs and jawbones
(11:34):
to burns and internal injuries. In August eighteen ninety seven,
The Times reported on another death at Sloss, this one
more mysterious. Joseph F. Webb, a painter for the Southern Railway,
was found dead in a tank of boiling water at Sloss.
His body was discovered by a twelve year old boy
(11:54):
who worked at the furnaces as a coke poller. As
the Times described it, the body was and the flesh
fell off in chunks as it was drawn from the vat.
Webb had last been seen leaving a bar the night before,
and his friends suspected he was murdered and his body
thrown into the tank. When his body was pulled from
the tank, bruises were visible around his neck. Webb was
(12:17):
a vocal member of a white supremacist order called Regents
of the White Shield, and one newspaper suggested that he
had been murdered by a group of black men. However,
witnesses said that he was extremely intoxicated on the night
of his death, lending credence to the idea that he
fell in the vat accidentally. This was the theory eventually
settled on by investigators. In August nineteen hundred five workers,
(12:43):
all black men, were severely burned in another horrific accident.
Its loss limestone and ore lining the walls of Furnace
Number one fell on them as they were tending the fire,
causing a terrific explosion of gas and steam. As the
Birmingham Age Harold wrote, two of the men would die
from their injuries in the following days. The flippant description
(13:05):
in the local newspaper indicates the pervasive attitude toward black
people at the time. The article read everything was done
to alleviate the suffering of the men, but as the
hospitals were all crowded, they had to be sent to
their homes in various parts of the city. The furnace
was in no way damaged, and the only inconvenience experienced
(13:26):
by the company was the removal of the fallen rock.
Imagine having burned so severe they would eventually take your
life and being told that there was no room for
you at the only place that could help you. By
the nineteen tens, Sloss was one of the world's largest
pig iron manufacturers, but owners were slow to update the
(13:48):
furnaces with more modern systems. According to the furnace's history,
between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen thirty one, the plant
underwent a concentrated program of mechanization. Most of its major
operation equipment, the blast furnaces and the charging and casting machinery,
was replaced at this time. In nineteen twenty seven to
(14:09):
nineteen twenty eight, the two furnaces were rebuilt, enlarged, and
refitted with mechanical charging equipment, doubling the plant's production capacity.
The mechanization brought the plant up to date with technology
that had been invented several decades earlier, and finally did
away with the now antiquated sand casting method of creating
(14:30):
pig iron. It has been suggested by historians that Sauce
was so slow to keep up with the times due
to the cheapness and abundance of black labor in the South.
Until nineteen twenty eight, the furnaces coal mines were staffed
with largely black convict labor. David Lewis wrote in Sauce
Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District on Industrial
(14:52):
Epic that in eighteen ninety ninety of the one thousand
inmates working there died on the job, a disproportionately high
high number of workplace debts compared to similar minds. According
to Standeal of al dot com, historians have said nobody
knows how many men died at Sloss over its nine
decade history. In general, human life was considered cheap at Sloss,
(15:17):
according to tour guide Richard Neely. As Ellen Brown wrote
in The Haunting of Alabama, doctor Neely suggested that Sloss
Furnaces was not overconcerned with the welfare of the workers
because they could be easily replaced. One of the workers
interviewed Love to tell the story that they told the
workers here, don't kill any mules. Mules cost twenty five dollars.
(15:39):
But men, men, we can replace. In nineteen fifty two,
the furnaces were purchased by the US Pipe and Foundry Company.
In the late nineteen fifties, the Slaws quarters were dismantled
as they became too expensive for the company to maintain.
The furnaces closed for good in nineteen seventy one due
to stricter air pollution regulations of the Clean Air Act
(16:02):
and old machinery that couldn't meet them. At this time,
the structures were donated to the Alabama State Fair Commission.
The structure was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen
eighty one. Slass Furnaces became a museum in nineteen eighty three.
In addition to offering self guided tours, the museum hosts
programs like conferences, metal art exhibitions, concerts, and festivals. According
(16:27):
to the furnace's history, Sloss is currently the only twentieth
century blast furnace in the US being preserved and interpreted
as a historic industrial site. Maybe it's because so many
people were treated as less than its lost furnaces, that
there's such strong paranormal energy at the site, or maybe
it's that more than ninety years of employees going to
(16:48):
work every day fearing terrible injuries and possible death left
a psychic stain on the place. Whatever reason there is
for all of the paranormal activity, it's a lot, and
it started decades ago while Sloss was still operating. According
to Standel, workers in the blowing engine building reported that
objects mysteriously moved. They might leave a tool in one place,
(17:10):
for example, and come back to find it in another.
That building, the oldest still standing at Sloss, is also
said to be the most haunted. Full body apparitions have
been reported at Sloss Furnaces, and some people claim that
they have been pushed or shoved by unseen forces. Others
report hearing mysterious music they describe as an eerie singing
(17:31):
in the complex. As Alan Brown wrote in The Spirits
of Sloss Furnaces, investigators have captured EVPs on the property,
including the voice of a little girl who said, Hi, Daddy,
here's your lunch. This was thought to be the spirit
of one of the children who lived in Sloss quarters.
Mitch Goth in Haunted US reported that people claim to
(17:53):
have heard the voices of former workers in the facilities
telling them to mind the heat or push some steel. Sloss,
though never produced steel. The primary ghost story at Sloss
Furnaces concerns an unethical foreman named James Slag Wormwood. According
to legend, he ran the furnace's graveyard shift in the
(18:14):
early nineteen hundreds. According to Fright Furnace, the Halloween event
that ran its slaws from nineteen ninety seven to twenty nineteen,
Slag would make his workers take dangerous risks, forcing them
to speed up production. Dozens of workers are said to
have died as a result of Slag's policies. The story
goes that in October nineteen oh six, Slag fell from
(18:36):
the top of a blast furnace into a pool of
iron ore, dying instantly. Many assumed this was no accident,
but his maltreated workers finally taking their revenge. Workers soon
began to report unusual occurrences in the furnaces that they
attributed to Slag's vengeful spirit. In nineteen seventy one, the
night before the plant closed, night watchman Samuel Blumenthal supposedly
(18:59):
encountered the most frightening thing he had ever seen. According
to Fright Furnace, he described it simply as evil, a
half man, half demon who tried to push him up
the stairs. When Blumenthal refused, the monster began to beat
on him with his fists. According to legend, Blumenthal emerged
from the furnaces covered in burns and later died from
(19:20):
his injuries. However, that story, and the story of Slag
Wormwood is just that a story, a story invented by
the haunted attraction for the haunted attraction, which many such
attractions do. However, sometimes these stories go on to be
passed along as fact. According to Slass Furnace's marketing officer,
(19:40):
Rachel Vershore, Slag simply never existed. Vershore told Roadside America
that a well known paranormal show came down and talked
to our Halloween Fright Furnace crew. They told them about Slag,
a legend that they had created, and I guess the
show just assumed it was real. While Slass claims that
the the Halloween Event invented Slag, his legend might be
(20:02):
based in part on the true story of Theophilus Jowers,
who died in Birmingham's nearby Alice Furnace in September eighteen
eighty seven. Many modern reports about incidents at Sloss seemed
to conflate sloths in Alice Furnaces, which were two separate
companies located across town from each other. An assistant foundryman Jowers,
(20:23):
was assisting in switching out bells and Alice Furnace number one.
As he held onto a rope attached the old bell,
Jowers tripped and he and the bell tumbled into the
heat of the furnace. Catherine Wyndham wrote in The Ghost
and the Sloss Furnace that, according to one contemporary news report,
the intense heat reduced his body almost to ashes. A
(20:45):
piece of sheet iron was attached to a length of
gas pipe, and with that instrument, his head, bowels, two
hip bones, and a few ashes were fished out. Two
workmen who were on the bridge with him came very
near going in as well. Some believe that Jowers's ghost
haunts Sloss, the logic being that he migrated there after
(21:06):
Alice Furnaces closed down in nineteen twenty seven. It's claimed
that he's been seen walking the catwalk in the furnaces
He's also been seen performing his work tasks as he
would have in life, albeit not at Sloss. It's said
that in nineteen twenty seven, his son John Jowers saw
a figure of a man emerge from a cloud of
sparks at Sloss. Though the sparks would have been too
(21:29):
hot for an actual human to be that close, that
could very well have been the ghost of Theophilus Jowers.
Psychics have reported that the ghost of Jowers does not
want to move on and is happy at Sloss. Another popular,
likely untrue ghost story claims that a woman who was
pregnant out of wedlock threw herself into the furnaces sometime
(21:49):
around nineteen hundred. As is typical of these stories, it's
sometimes said to have taken place at Alice rather than Sloths,
or the two are conflated. It's claimed that at her
memorial service, a white deer appeared, representing her spirit, and
that this deer still appears whence Sloss hosts events. While
(22:09):
the ghost stories might not always correspond with history, there
are surely lots of ghosts at Sloss, noted is one
of the most haunted locations, if not the most haunted location,
in Alabama. There are lots of stories to tell. I've
investigated there, so I've got a few experiences to share,
and so does paranormal investigator Kevin Walden, who we will
(22:30):
be chatting with up next that is coming up after
the break. So I am now joined by paranormal investigator
Kevin Walden, who has spent a lot of time investigating
Sloss Furnaces. I've investigated there as well, so I think
(22:53):
together we can have a great conversation. So thanks for joining.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Us, Kevin, That's no problem. Thank you very much for
having me.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
To start off by saying that Sloss Furnaces is clearly
a very historical location. They still have a lot of
programs there and things, and you can visit them anytime.
They have kind of backed away from their ghosts and
their paranormal tours. And I do see kind of a
lot of locations, not a lot, but locations do occasionally
(23:20):
do that something happens, they get a bad taste in
their mouth about it, or they're concerned about, you know,
being disrespectful, and so I just want to send the
message out to Sloss and other historical locations that are
truly haunted, that think that it is disrespectful to pursue that.
Just know that there are very much ways to keep
your history accurate and very respectfully handle your hauntings and
(23:44):
at the same time bring in some extra revenue, which
I know a lot of these locations need. So if
any locations out there want to talk to me about it,
please reach out. I love helping and I think it
is a great opportunity, but I also completely understand when
places kind of veer away from it. So just know
that in the right hands, you all can do it.
So that being said, Kevin Slaus is wild. I have
(24:09):
investigated there a few times on and off camera and
have had some pretty amazing experiences there. So what drew
you to that hunt in the first place.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
We Slaus has just always kind of been there in
the background of Birmingham, a lot of history there, a
lot of tragic deaths unfortunately, and ever since I was
a child, I've always been kind of interested in, you know,
the spooky stuff and the kind of scary things. But
what actually got me to go there. We had to
do a presentation for one of our high school classes
(24:43):
and they said they wanted us to go out and
do something we've never done before. So me and my
group we decided, hey, let's go ghost hunting. Oddly enough,
there was a ghost hunter's marathon going on on Sci
Fi Channel. So I just sitting here talking to you
about this is kind of crazy and it's own.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Right, but it always comes around right, full circle.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, So we decided we were actually going to go
out to Old Bryce Sat in Tuscaloosa. It's this old
mental institution, looks straight out of a horror movie. So
we pack up, we head out there. We get about
four steps on the door and a state trooper shows up.
You know, we we were young and dumb, about sixteen
seventeen years old, but we were detained for about twenty minutes.
(25:30):
I think it was just trying to scare us more
than anything, but finally he let us go. We were
coming back from Tuscaloos to Birmingham and that's when we
saw it off in the distance, the towers of slush
just standing there staring back at us, and we were like,
you know what, let's give it another shot. Let's go here.
So we pull in and there's a security guard working
and as soon as we come walking up as you know,
(25:51):
what are you guys doing here? And We told him, man,
we're just trying to do this thing for school. We're
trying to get a good grade on it. He was like, well,
i'll tell you what you guys, come in, I'll give
you a free tour. So he walked us around and
then finally I was like, I'm gonna be leaving here
at about midnight. You guys got two hours to do
your thing. And then I'm out, wow, And I think
he was scared to be there really after midnight.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
That's so interesting. So you did it the right way.
You actually had permission. I think that that happened sometimes.
You know, when I was in high school, I'm totally
guilty of going places I should not have. And yeah,
and now I think it's great that it's so kind
of at the forefront because we can educate kids now, like, hey,
(26:35):
you don't have to break into these locations. There are
plenty of places for you to go with permission. And
so I'm glad that you guys had permission, and you know,
it's probably meant to be. So now that night, what happened.
Did you have any experiences?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, that being our first night ghost sunning, you know,
I think a lot of it was just us kind
of being paranoid, and you know, we're comparing it to
you know, movies in Hollywood and stuff like that, but
that doesn't take away from some of the crazy things
we did experience. That's where we learned the story.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Of slag right, which isn't necessarily true, but it's a
good story.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
At the time, it was definitely true in our minds. Yeah,
we were walking around. We had this one kid in
our class that we'd never really talked to, but once
he found out where we're ghost sonny, he was like,
you know, dude, I'm all in, let me go with you.
So he's walking around and he's got this audio recorder
and there's this big pipe next to him. He says, hey, man,
if he died in this pipe, let me know, and
(27:33):
he reaches his arm up in the pipe. Well, when
he pulls the recorder back out, he rewinds it hits play,
and this voice comes through right after he puts in
the pipe and it says creepy, but the way it
says it is also creepy, because it was.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Like creepy, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah. And another thing that happened with the audio recorder,
my cousin Sean had set it down. We were going
to leave it in one little spot by itself for
about an hour, just come back and listen to it,
which you know as well as I do. Listening back
to all that audio is painstaking.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But it really is. That's why voice activated recorders are
my friend. Now.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, but uh, he lays the recorder down and he says, Okay,
we're gonna leave this here for about an hour. We'll
come back and get it. So we walk off and
we get lost in there because Sloss is so huge
and there's so many twists and turns, and when we
finally find it, it was about an hour and a
half later. Well, he picks the recorder up. It stop
(28:30):
on it, he says, and cut. We go to a
Wanda back and I'm like, something's wrong with us. This
file isn't too long out here, so we can't play
on it. And it starts off with him saying, we're
gonna leave this recorder here. If anybody's here, let us know.
He sets it down. You hear this loud like whoosh
sound and then it goes directly into him saying and cut.
(28:54):
So to us, it's like something came up turn the
recorder off and when we were coming back to get it,
turned it back on.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I've had that happen before, and it's interesting. It's like, yeah,
we don't really want to talk to you. And I
mean at this time, they might have been having investigations
and you know, they start to get familiar with your
equipment and they're like, oh, this is that thing that
hears us click, it's turn it off. So not today,
But yeah, I mean I found that there. The spirits
(29:22):
kind of are They can either be very active or
sometimes just kind of shy.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I think we investigated there a total of seven times,
and most nights we'd have something happened, something crazy would happen.
I think there was only one night we went in
and the ghosts were like, man, we're tired of you guys,
get out of here.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know, did you have any experiences in that tunnel,
because I had a wild experience in the tunnel with
meat Loaf of all people, But did you have any
experiences in the tunnel.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We did have some strange things happening there. There was
one night there was four of us and we were
walking around. We go down into the tunnel. Well, as
we're walking along, we kind of split up. Two of
us go one way, two of us go the other.
And while we're standing there talking, all of a sudden,
from up above us, I hear what sounds like somebody
grabbing a metal chair and just sliding in across the
(30:12):
floor upstairs. M So me hostatly run towards it. I
go up there, don't see anything out of the ordinary.
But when I'm watching our footage back as we're going
down into the tunnel, there's two middle chairs sitting to
the side of the staircase. But when we come back up,
there's only one chair sitting there, and there was nobody
(30:33):
else there but us that night.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
That's wild. So that's the kind of thing when that happens,
like your whole body just kind of goes ooh okay, yeah,
you know, in that tunnel. So that was actually one
of the first places that I had a really good
experience with the laser grid. And so I was investigating
in the tunnel with Adam Barry and meet Loaf. Meatloaf
was a massive paranormal fan, and so I got to
(30:59):
investigate with him if times, and he just was like
very gung how he loved he loved it, and so
He sat in that tunnel with Adam and myself and
we had used the laser grid. We kind of aimed
it all the way down the tunnel and we watched
as a shadow kept kind of peeking out. And the
(31:21):
thing with the laser grid is when a shadow walks
into it, like a shadow figure, the little points just
disappear and you see the outline of a person. It's
not like they're reflecting, like if I stand in it,
I just have lasers all over me. But when a
shadow figure pops into it, like you see an outline
of them. And that was the first time I really
saw that. And Meat Love kept calling out to him
(31:42):
or Meat he liked to be called Meat, but he
kept calling out to this spirit and it would get
a little bit closer, its getting a little more comfortable,
and I swear we sat it felt like an hour
or two. We sat there because Meat did not want
to leave. We were just like watching this shadow go
(32:02):
back and forth. And yeah, it just seemed like someone
kind of shy and like not sure of us. That
was a really crazy experience.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Was that on the side next to the big machine
or the side with the staircase going up.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I think it was the side with the big machine,
if I remember correctly. So, I mean it's been a
long time, so.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
We ha'ds something similar. We didn't have the laser grid,
but we were down there one not I think it
might have been our second or third time there, and
we were on one end. I think we were on
the staircase side where it just goes right back up
into the main room up there, and it was real
dark back towards the machine. And my cousin Sean pointed
(32:46):
out first. He was like, I thought there's something looking
at us from behind that big machine. M hm. So
I looked down that way, and sure enough you could
see something just kind of poking its head around the machine,
looking at us. They go back over, come run the side,
peek at us. So I walk down that way, I
get to the machine. You can actually squeeze past that
(33:08):
machine and the tunnel continues on for miles back that way.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
That, And sure enough there was nothing back there. But
when I came back out and met back up with him,
I'll look back and you could see it again. This
thing just it's like I was watching us, just studying us,
you know.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, I felt like when we tried to get closer,
it would kind of back off, and so we just
kept our distance. And I swear I think Meat even
thought he knew his name, like he really felt as
though he was a conduit for the paranormal and that
he had like that he was psychic and he was
calling out to him. Gosh, I can't remember what it was,
but side note later on. So he had a really
(33:46):
good time investigating with Adam and me, And so at
the end of the night there, it was like three
thirty in the morning and we're doing one last run
way back like by the boiler room or something, and
our producer told us, he's like, don't tell meat Loaf
(34:06):
that you're still investigating. He's like, we need to start
wrapping up, and so don't tell him. And we're like okay,
So we quietly, we literally like were sneaking to the
boiler room so he wouldn't know, and we are doing
an EVP session. All of a sudden, the producer comes
around the corner and he's like, meat, little sound out
where you are. He thinks he's being funny. He's gonna
come scare you right now, so like and so he
(34:29):
comes barreling around the corner. He doesn't even have a
camera operator with him, and he's just like Boo Amy
and Adam and then so we literally had to sit
there and investigate with him until this sun was coming up.
The crew went into overtime. It was just so it
was the funniest So yeah, fun stories. But now, over
the time that you investigated there, what would you say
(34:50):
was like your most frightening experience.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Uh, definitely the most frightening. I think it was our filth.
There's a time there we decided we're going to start
doing you know, kind of isolation sessions around the planet.
So I decide I'll be enough. I was gonna go
down to the boiler room. So I make my way
down there. And this is way back when I had
(35:15):
that brick, no Kia phone. You know, we didn't have
the cell phones with the lights on or anything. So
I was like, I'm gonna leave my phone with you
guys because it creates this interference on the camera, So
leave that behind. The only light I had was on
my camera itself. So I make my way down into
the boiler room and I'm sitting there and I'm waiting.
(35:37):
I keep hearing things, you know, kind of off from
the distance. I'm thinking, maybe it's just the guys walking
around messing with me or something. Well, I'll pull up
audio recorder. I start recording, you know, if anybody's here,
give me a sign. And all of a sudden, it
just felt so different in there, like this heaviness just
set in. Well, all of a sudden, my audio recorder
(35:58):
just dies on me, and I'm like, okay, that's strange.
When they say no, my camera dies on me. So
I'm down there in pitch black, I can't see anything
at all, and all of a sudden, something slaps me
full force across the face. Oh no, yeah, And you know,
I'm sitting there in the dark, something slapping me, and
I'm just like, well, this is it. I've had a
(36:18):
good run, I guess. So the only thing I can
think to say is you know, I'm sorry. And I
start feeling my way out of the boiler room. I
had to work my way up the staircase, and when
I reached the top of the staircase, I go and
I find the other guys, and before I can even
tell them, I got slapped in the face. So, like,
you know, what happened? To you what happened to your face?
(36:39):
I had a handprint across my face and they took
some pictures of it. But what was strange about it
was if you go to touching, you know, espely when
you get slapped for it be kind of warm. When
they went to touch it was actually ice cold. And yeah.
The only thing I can relate that to would be
you know, a foreman come in seeing me sitting there
(37:01):
doing nothing and being like, hey, get back to work.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
P yeah, or just like we don't want you here,
you know that's I mean. So those are the kind
of experiences what people say is investigating dangerous overall. No,
even getting slapped by a ghost, which I've been shoved, pushed, whatever, scratched.
It's the reaction that you have, like thankfully you calmly
(37:26):
were like I'm sorry, and you left. But a lot
of people would run in the dark, probably run into
some sort of large metal object and fall down some stairs,
like because it's your instinct when that happens is flight.
Your body is like nope out. And then the other
lesson there, Kevin, is you always have a backup light always. No,
(37:50):
I've learned that lesson to that happened to us that
this is somewhere else. We're here as a mine of
all places. And the power went out when we were
under the ground, and I was like, oh my god,
worst nightmare. And I just had my phone light and
I was like, God, what happens if this doesn't work?
Speaker 1 (38:05):
True?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well that I mean that honestly though, that is scary
and that is a message, you know, So it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
What would you say is like, maybe this is kind
of the most common activity that people experience there.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Uh, definitely, you know, walking into a room, just filling
those unseen eyes on you and walking into cold spots.
I took my cousin there. She wanted to do a
report for school about my report for school, and you know,
I took her there. She'd never been there before. And
as soon as I walked into a room, I felt
the hairs on my arm starting to stand up. And
(38:42):
before I could say anything, she was like, man, I'm cold,
my hair on my arm is standing up. And just
hearing footsteps, a lot of footsteps, sounds of people still working.
That was one of the main things we've caught back
in the day, was s only somebody hammering something or
you know, it's a little along those lines.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
But yeah, I feel like there's a lot of residual
energy there just in general. You can definitely feel that,
and you're right, And I think that's one of the
things within investigating is to kind of listen to your body,
you know, what you're feeling, because that's usually a clue
that something could potentially be about to go down, like
if you you know, you start having that kind of
(39:24):
like hair on the back of your neck standing up,
or like feeling of being watched. Like there's a reason
why we feel that way. That's instinct and I definitely
experienced that there. So now, is there a place there
that you find Obviously the boiler room is high up,
but is there are there certain areas that you would
consider hot spots for people who are investigating.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Oh, definitely say the boiler room, and definitely the tunnel.
I feel like we got the most activity there, and
there used to be a boardwalk heading towards the tunnel.
I think they've cemented that in now to kind of
make it more of a regular like sidewalk tad, but
we'd hear all kind of stuff there. That first night
we went, it was middle of summer. Cricket's chirping like crazy,
(40:09):
and that guy that went with us, that we didn't
really know, he decided to start kind of provoking. And
for me, I've never really wanted to try provoking. It's
not really my thing, you know. But he starts just
calling it out. He's come on, I show yourself. We're
not scared to you do something. Do something. And all
of a sudden, just every single sound around us just disappeared,
(40:32):
like the crickets stopped. He couldn't hear any cars or anything,
and this cold gust wind blew in, and I remember
looking at my cousin Sean, I'm just like, well, we're
in a horror movie situation now. I think right after that,
we were walking along and I've got some video of
this up on my YouTube channel. We're walking along and
(40:54):
I'm panning towards one of the roofs of the one
of the buildings, and you see this figure standing on
top of it. Well, as we get a little bit closer,
this figure just kind of sinks into the building.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Wiles.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, it doesn't like jump off or anything like that.
It just kind of sinks into the building.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
That's really I actually, I do remember them mentioning that
people see figures up on like the catwalks and stuff
a lot, or like you know, walking in areas that
you definitely do not have access to, and even that
it's happened like during the day before too, where people
are just there touring and they're like, who's that and
you know there's not there's no live person in that area.
(41:34):
So where were you when you had the experience where
your friend started like trying to provoke? Was that outside?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Uh? Yes, that was outside on the board walk there.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Oh, that's right, you did mention that. So because I
had a really strange experience outside, I cannot remember if
this was on camera or not. You know, it kind
of all melds together. But I was walking kind of
by where you go into the tunnel and there's it
was like a gravel kind of roadway and I was walking,
you know, step crunch, crunch, crunch, and I heard steps
(42:07):
behind me and I thought it was someone trying to
scare me, like on the crew or something. And I
was like, I stopped and turned around and there's no
one and I'm like okay, So I start walking and
I hear it again, crunch, crunch, crunched and I'm like okay,
and I stopped that time, and it kept getting closer
to me, and I was just like, okay, I'm just
(42:27):
gonna walk really fast. I probably started whistling. I've mentioned
this before, but I have this theory that if you're whistling,
nothing bad can happen to you. And so, yeah, and
so I do remember that, and it was it was outside,
so I mean, obviously hants don't just stay indoors, but
it was that was a pretty wild experience. Okay, so
(42:50):
we have hot spots now. So you said you've investigated
there seven plus times. Does it sound like it does
seem like you've ever encountered like the same spirit more
than once.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
I would say, so that figure I was telling you
about down in the tone that we kind of peek
around the corner and watch us. I feel like we've
seen it two to three more times just around the
facility itself. One of those we're actually kind of in
the same place you were just talking about. And there's
like these little inlets that go in between like some
of the boilers there. Well, we were walking along and
(43:23):
I happen to look towards one of them, and same deal.
I see this thing kind of standing there, peeking around
the corner, watching us go over there, and it's nothing.
So I just I feel like maybe there's at least
one spirit there that's kind of like, let me see
what's going on here, you know, got us out or something.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah, now, what is your overall vibe there? Do you
feel like these spirits are intelligent and interactive or do
you think that it's mostly residual type activity.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Weird enough, I feel like there's sort of a mixture
of both. I feel like the majority is definitely residual,
just from the sounds and you know, people work and
all that stuff, people seeing people up on the furnaces,
you know, quote unquote working. But then you get those that,
like I said, they'll be watching you or when I
got slapped, that's definitely someone intelligent. So I feel like
(44:14):
it's a good mixture of both. Right.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Well, I mean, I'm really hoping we can get back
in there in an investigative fashion soon enough. But yeah,
now I find it super interesting. I'm glad you got
to investigate it so many times. It was one of
my favorite places to investigate, so it's kind of kind
of revisit it Now, you mentioned you have a YouTube channel.
Do you want to tell people where they can find
that and see some of your work.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Sure, it's it's on YouTube. The channel's called Alabama's Most
Haunted and basically we go out to some of the
most haunted places in Alabama once we get permission of courts.
I always remember that. Yeah, it's just Alabima's Most Haunted.
I think we've got about nine full length episodes up now,
and you know, we got a couple of little previews, trailers,
(44:58):
behind the scenes stuff. But there's a lot of haunted
places in Alabama that people just don't know about. You
got this Loss, which is famous for its hauntings, but
there's also so many other places that are just kind
of under the radar. Yeah, and kind of touching back
on what you saidwhere for us started, you know, it
was Loss not really wanting that kind of publicity anymore.
(45:22):
You know this, Several places will contact for the show
and they're like, I'm sorry, we don't want we don't
want to be affiliated with that kind of thing. We
don't want that kind of image.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, and I think it comes from a place of misunderstanding.
I think that there have been so many instances of
people going in and kind of disrespectfully handling a hunt,
and I think that at that point, you know, and
I can't blame them. A lot of these historical locations
are just like we don't even want to deal with this,
like this is. But I've worked with a lot of
(45:53):
places kind of hand in hand and helped them and
educated on like how to do these in a way
where it's a win win for everyone. And so, like
I said before, if anyone's listening and you want to
know how to do it, like, just feel free to
reach out to it. I love helping, and so if
there's any of those places you're trying to reach out
to and you want to send them my way, go
(46:13):
for it, because I think it's important. You know, it's
not just important for what we do, but like, what
about the ghosts. I think about that, What about the ghosts?
You know, Like I think about lost ghosts where everybody
was there talking to them all the time and suddenly
there's no one. They're probably they got used to the
attention now they're like hello, I do yeah. So but anyways,
(46:34):
I really thank you for taking the time. It's been fascinating,
and you know, hopefully our paths will cross in person soon.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
It sounds great. I look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
While in many ways loss Furnaces highlights a tragic part
of our history, it also stands a reminder of how
important it is we don't forget that history. Ghosts or not.
It's a very compelling place to visit it and I
highly recommend you do so if you ever find yourself
near Birmingham. I feel lucky to have investigated there when
(47:07):
I did, and I do so hope the ghosts have
found a way to reach out to others since, because,
as we all know, even if you avoid acknowledging a haunting,
that doesn't mean the ghosts go away. I'm Amy Brune
and this was Haunted Road. My fall tour has been
(47:32):
announced and I am going to a lot of places.
I have stopped in California, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina,
New York, Connecticut and more So. Please head to Amy
Brune dot com if you're interested in seeing me live
my life with the Afterlife True Tales of the Paranormal
tour is a great chance to talk all about the
(47:52):
hauntings I've encountered over my twenty plus years of paranormal investigating.
It's spooky and fun and perfect for fun, and I
can't wait for you to see it. Many of the
venues have a VIP meet and greet option two, which
are filling up fast. So again, head to Amy brune
dot com and click on the events and appearances paid
to get tickets today, Thank you friends. Haunted Road is
(48:20):
hosted and written by me Amy Bruney, with additional research
by Taylor Haggerdorn and Cassandra de Alba. This show is
edited and produced by rema El Kali, with supervising producer
Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. Haunted Road is a production of iHeartRadio and
(48:41):
Grim and Mild from Aaronmanke. Learn more about this show
over at Grimanmild dot com, and for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You might say that Birmingham, Alabama, was faded to become
a center of industry, a place made rich by manufacturing
products and shipping them across the globe. But all of
that prosperity came at a cost, a human cost. Birmingham
quickly became a center of iron production, but smelting all
(00:34):
that iron ore was a laborious job that was deathly dangerous.
Men sustained terrible injuries and were sometimes cooked alive from
exposure to the molten iron. And as racial inequity and
hostility toward Black Americans grew, the burden those men bore
became disproportionately more perilous. The sloss furnaces contained the ghosts
(00:57):
of some of the darkest moments in Birmingham history. And
it's all still there today, being relived by those who
won't or can't leave it behind. I'm Amy Bruney, and
this is Haunted Road. When Birmingham was founded in eighteen
(01:20):
seventy one, its planners envisioned a rich future in an
Appalachian Valley in north central Alabama. The city sat at
the crossroads of two railroad lines on one of the
world's richest mineral Deposits hopes to establish a town with
considerable industry were so high that investors in the Ellaton
Land Company, the founding company of the city, named it
(01:43):
after Birmingham, England, the epicenter of the iron industry in
the UK. The plan worked thanks in large part to
Sloss Furnaces, a processing plant that extracted iron from rocks
by superheating the iron ore, converting it into liquid iron,
and cool it into a solid that was then sold
and used for countless purposes. Sloss Furnaces was built in
(02:06):
eighteen eighty one, named after Colonel James Withers Sloss, one
of Birmingham's founding fathers. Sloss played an important role in
the founding of the city because he convinced a major
railroad of the day to lay tracks through the fledgling town.
In its first year, Sloss Furnaces sold twenty four thousand
tons of iron. Along with other manufacturing plants, Sloss became
(02:30):
so profitable so rapidly that Birmingham became known as Magic City,
a nickname that came from the fact that the city
grew so quickly it seemed to be by magic. By
the mid eighteen eighties, Birmingham was a bona fide manufacturing hub.
Demand grew so quickly that its owners began construction on
a second furnace just a year after its opening. Combined,
(02:53):
the furnaces could produce over two hundred and fifty tons
of iron a day. Slas Furnaces National Historic Landmark describes
the physical structure sixty feet high and eighteen feet in diameter.
Sloss's new Whitwell stoves were the first of their type
ever built in Birmingham and were comparable to similar equipment
(03:14):
used in the North. Local observers were proud that much
of the machinery used by Slass's new furnaces would be
of Southern manufacture. It included two blowing engines and ten
boilers thirty feet long and forty six inches in diameter.
According to the podcast Homespun Haunts, pig iron, the main
product of the furnaces, gets its name from the shape
(03:36):
of the cooling trenches the workers would dump the molten
iron into cool These trenches looked like a sow feeding
piglets in eighteen eighty three, Sloss Furnaces won a bronze
medal for the best pig Iron at the Louisville Exhibition.
Iron was extracted in the two furnaces through a hot,
dangerous process. As the Slass Furnaces Tour describes, Iron ore, limestone, coke,
(04:02):
and hot air were continuously fed into the furnace, which
would reach temperatures of thirty eight hundred degrees. As the
materials moved down and hot air moved up in the furnace,
two products accumulated in the bottom or hearth, molten iron
and slag. The iron and slag were withdrawn or tapped
through two holes called notches. About every four hours, the
(04:24):
iron notch, located at the base of the furnace was opened,
allowing the molten iron to flow out of the furnace.
In addition to the furnaces themselves, the plant contained many
more buildings, including ten boilers that would burn waste gas
created inside the furnace during the iron making process, and
a pyrometer house which contained the machines that measured temperature
(04:47):
in the furnaces. According to the Slass Furnaces Tour, this
building is the strongest built building on the site and
would be used to protect the workers if anything went
seriously wrong with the furnace. This the use of the
pyrometer house prompted the workers to call it the dog house,
saying the furnace would get mad at them and put
them in the doghouse. Those furnaces were powered by blowing engines.
(05:11):
As the tour describes, the blowing engines stand over thirty
feet tall and turned flywheels twenty feet in diameter at
a rate of about thirty revolutions per minute. Each engine
had a steam cylinder on the bottom and an air
cylinder on the top. Steam drove the piston in the
steam cylinder up and down, in turn driving the piston
(05:32):
in the air cylinder. The moving piston pulled in air,
compressed it, and pushed it out. These generated a large
amount of noise. The decibel level would compare to that
of standing front row at a rock concert. Cast sheds
cover the areas where iron was poured from the furnaces
and then cooled into pigs. According to industrial archaeology, the
(05:55):
work of breaking and carrying the newly cast pigs was arduous, hot,
and dangerous. Workers wore wooden shoes in order to protect
their feet from being scorched by the liquid iron, and
had to work at a rapid pace to clear the
shed for the next opening of a furnace notch. The
furnaces didn't just generate significant income for Birmingham. Visiting them
(06:17):
was a pastime for locals. The road to the plant
has significant shoulders so that people could gather and watch
the plant's workings at a safe distance. As Robin MacDonald
wrote in the Anniston Star, people gathered in the smoke,
the fumes, and the steam each night along the viaduct
to watch molten iron and burning slag pour from the
(06:38):
nearby furnace mouths. Some brought their dates, some brought their children.
Some came on Sunday afternoon furnus party picnics. Other Southern
cities had undeniable segregation problems in racial tensions, but Birmingham
had a specially severe and distinct racial division. Martin Luther
(07:01):
King Junior once described Birmingham as the most segregated city
in America. By the mid twentieth century, Birmingham became notorious
for its segregation. This included a series of racially motivated bombings,
most famously the nineteen sixty three bombing of the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church, which killed four young black girls. Earlier
(07:23):
that year, during the Birmingham Campaign, a massive desegregation action,
the city's Public Safety Commissioner, Eugene bull Conner, oversaw the
use of extreme force against nonviolent protesters, generating worldwide outrage.
These protests were when Martin Luther King Junior was arrested
and wrote his famous letter from Birmingham jail. The manufacturing industry,
(07:49):
including Sloss Furnaces, was highly segregated until the nineteen sixties.
Workers at Sloss were required to keep everything separate. They
bathed in separate bathhouses, punched separate time clocks, and stayed
in separate company housing. As Karen Utts wrote in the
Alabama Humanities Alliance, between nineteen hundred and nineteen fifty, Slass
(08:11):
Furnaces maintained company houses throughout Birmingham's Industrial District. Sloss Quarters,
the forty eight houses adjacent to city Furnaces were designed
specifically for African American workers. They were typical shotgun style structures,
with two rooms set on foundation posts and no indoor plumbing.
Until the nineteen thirties. While not a companied town in
(08:34):
the strictest sense. The quarters contained a doctor's office, a commissary,
and offered numerous neighborhood gatherings, including watermelon cuttings, suppers, dancing,
and ball games. By the turn of the century, Birmingham's
iron and steel workforce was sixty five percent black, a
number that would climb to seventy five percent by nineteen ten.
(08:56):
Black employees were only offered the most perilous jobs in
air dangerous industry. Whites populated all the managerial and scientific
roles of the furnaces, while black workers were relegated to
lower paying risk year rolls. There were various ways to
die in the furnaces, including being crushed by an elevator
(09:18):
full of ore like William Mitchell in eighteen eighty nine,
overcome by gas like Julian Wood in eighteen ninety one,
buried in coal from a coal shoot like Levitigus span
in eighteen ninety two, hit in the head with a
bucket of bricks like will Buchanan in eighteen ninety seven,
or simply being found dead on coke oven like David
(09:41):
Tuck in eighteen ninety nine. In November eighteen eighty two,
less than a year after it opened. A horrific accident
took place at Sloss Furnaces. Two black workers, Alec King
and Bob Mayfield, had been lowered into one of the
furnaces stacks in order to clean off a scaffold, a
build up of coke and ore that caused it to malfunction.
(10:03):
When the scaffold gave way, it sent up a pillar
of smoke and ash, suffocating the men and causing them
to fall into the fire of the furnace. One local newspaper,
whose reporter was on scene as their bodies were recovered,
described a truly nightmarish sight in an article headlined Another
Furnace Horror. The reporter wrote, after removing a quantity of
(10:27):
slag and ore, they drew out the charred and blackened
remains of what had been only a few moments before
two living beings. The bodies were a ghastly and revolting sight.
The skulls were bleached white, The arms of both were
drawn up above the heads, the fingers were clenched tight,
and only small particles of charred flesh remained on blackened bones.
(10:49):
It was a scene that was indescribably horrible. The article
ran directly next to a report of a man's suicide
by jumping into nearby Alice furnace. In February eighteen ninety two,
an accident notable enough to make the New York Times
took place at Sloss Furnaces. A scaffold collapse caused eight
(11:10):
men to fall fifty eight feet two. John Stanton and
Jake Ritchie, both white mechanics in their early twenties, were
killed instantly. A contemporary report in The Daily Advertiser described
Richie's head as being mashed into a jelly. The other
six men, who were both white and black, were all injured,
five severely. Their injuries ranged from broken limbs and jawbones
(11:34):
to burns and internal injuries. In August eighteen ninety seven,
The Times reported on another death at Sloss, this one
more mysterious. Joseph F. Webb, a painter for the Southern Railway,
was found dead in a tank of boiling water at Sloss.
His body was discovered by a twelve year old boy
(11:54):
who worked at the furnaces as a coke poller. As
the Times described it, the body was and the flesh
fell off in chunks as it was drawn from the vat.
Webb had last been seen leaving a bar the night before,
and his friends suspected he was murdered and his body
thrown into the tank. When his body was pulled from
the tank, bruises were visible around his neck. Webb was
(12:17):
a vocal member of a white supremacist order called Regents
of the White Shield, and one newspaper suggested that he
had been murdered by a group of black men. However,
witnesses said that he was extremely intoxicated on the night
of his death, lending credence to the idea that he
fell in the vat accidentally. This was the theory eventually
settled on by investigators. In August nineteen hundred five workers,
(12:43):
all black men, were severely burned in another horrific accident.
Its loss limestone and ore lining the walls of Furnace
Number one fell on them as they were tending the fire,
causing a terrific explosion of gas and steam. As the
Birmingham Age Harold wrote, two of the men would die
from their injuries in the following days. The flippant description
(13:05):
in the local newspaper indicates the pervasive attitude toward black
people at the time. The article read everything was done
to alleviate the suffering of the men, but as the
hospitals were all crowded, they had to be sent to
their homes in various parts of the city. The furnace
was in no way damaged, and the only inconvenience experienced
(13:26):
by the company was the removal of the fallen rock.
Imagine having burned so severe they would eventually take your
life and being told that there was no room for
you at the only place that could help you. By
the nineteen tens, Sloss was one of the world's largest
pig iron manufacturers, but owners were slow to update the
(13:48):
furnaces with more modern systems. According to the furnace's history,
between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen thirty one, the plant
underwent a concentrated program of mechanization. Most of its major
operation equipment, the blast furnaces and the charging and casting machinery,
was replaced at this time. In nineteen twenty seven to
(14:09):
nineteen twenty eight, the two furnaces were rebuilt, enlarged, and
refitted with mechanical charging equipment, doubling the plant's production capacity.
The mechanization brought the plant up to date with technology
that had been invented several decades earlier, and finally did
away with the now antiquated sand casting method of creating
(14:30):
pig iron. It has been suggested by historians that Sauce
was so slow to keep up with the times due
to the cheapness and abundance of black labor in the South.
Until nineteen twenty eight, the furnaces coal mines were staffed
with largely black convict labor. David Lewis wrote in Sauce
Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District on Industrial
(14:52):
Epic that in eighteen ninety ninety of the one thousand
inmates working there died on the job, a disproportionately high
high number of workplace debts compared to similar minds. According
to Standeal of al dot com, historians have said nobody
knows how many men died at Sloss over its nine
decade history. In general, human life was considered cheap at Sloss,
(15:17):
according to tour guide Richard Neely. As Ellen Brown wrote
in The Haunting of Alabama, doctor Neely suggested that Sloss
Furnaces was not overconcerned with the welfare of the workers
because they could be easily replaced. One of the workers
interviewed Love to tell the story that they told the
workers here, don't kill any mules. Mules cost twenty five dollars.
(15:39):
But men, men, we can replace. In nineteen fifty two,
the furnaces were purchased by the US Pipe and Foundry Company.
In the late nineteen fifties, the Slaws quarters were dismantled
as they became too expensive for the company to maintain.
The furnaces closed for good in nineteen seventy one due
to stricter air pollution regulations of the Clean Air Act
(16:02):
and old machinery that couldn't meet them. At this time,
the structures were donated to the Alabama State Fair Commission.
The structure was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen
eighty one. Slass Furnaces became a museum in nineteen eighty three.
In addition to offering self guided tours, the museum hosts
programs like conferences, metal art exhibitions, concerts, and festivals. According
(16:27):
to the furnace's history, Sloss is currently the only twentieth
century blast furnace in the US being preserved and interpreted
as a historic industrial site. Maybe it's because so many
people were treated as less than its lost furnaces, that
there's such strong paranormal energy at the site, or maybe
it's that more than ninety years of employees going to
(16:48):
work every day fearing terrible injuries and possible death left
a psychic stain on the place. Whatever reason there is
for all of the paranormal activity, it's a lot, and
it started decades ago while Sloss was still operating. According
to Standel, workers in the blowing engine building reported that
objects mysteriously moved. They might leave a tool in one place,
(17:10):
for example, and come back to find it in another.
That building, the oldest still standing at Sloss, is also
said to be the most haunted. Full body apparitions have
been reported at Sloss Furnaces, and some people claim that
they have been pushed or shoved by unseen forces. Others
report hearing mysterious music they describe as an eerie singing
(17:31):
in the complex. As Alan Brown wrote in The Spirits
of Sloss Furnaces, investigators have captured EVPs on the property,
including the voice of a little girl who said, Hi, Daddy,
here's your lunch. This was thought to be the spirit
of one of the children who lived in Sloss quarters.
Mitch Goth in Haunted US reported that people claim to
(17:53):
have heard the voices of former workers in the facilities
telling them to mind the heat or push some steel. Sloss,
though never produced steel. The primary ghost story at Sloss
Furnaces concerns an unethical foreman named James Slag Wormwood. According
to legend, he ran the furnace's graveyard shift in the
(18:14):
early nineteen hundreds. According to Fright Furnace, the Halloween event
that ran its slaws from nineteen ninety seven to twenty nineteen,
Slag would make his workers take dangerous risks, forcing them
to speed up production. Dozens of workers are said to
have died as a result of Slag's policies. The story
goes that in October nineteen oh six, Slag fell from
(18:36):
the top of a blast furnace into a pool of
iron ore, dying instantly. Many assumed this was no accident,
but his maltreated workers finally taking their revenge. Workers soon
began to report unusual occurrences in the furnaces that they
attributed to Slag's vengeful spirit. In nineteen seventy one, the
night before the plant closed, night watchman Samuel Blumenthal supposedly
(18:59):
encountered the most frightening thing he had ever seen. According
to Fright Furnace, he described it simply as evil, a
half man, half demon who tried to push him up
the stairs. When Blumenthal refused, the monster began to beat
on him with his fists. According to legend, Blumenthal emerged
from the furnaces covered in burns and later died from
(19:20):
his injuries. However, that story, and the story of Slag
Wormwood is just that a story, a story invented by
the haunted attraction for the haunted attraction, which many such
attractions do. However, sometimes these stories go on to be
passed along as fact. According to Slass Furnace's marketing officer,
(19:40):
Rachel Vershore, Slag simply never existed. Vershore told Roadside America
that a well known paranormal show came down and talked
to our Halloween Fright Furnace crew. They told them about Slag,
a legend that they had created, and I guess the
show just assumed it was real. While Slass claims that
the the Halloween Event invented Slag, his legend might be
(20:02):
based in part on the true story of Theophilus Jowers,
who died in Birmingham's nearby Alice Furnace in September eighteen
eighty seven. Many modern reports about incidents at Sloss seemed
to conflate sloths in Alice Furnaces, which were two separate
companies located across town from each other. An assistant foundryman Jowers,
(20:23):
was assisting in switching out bells and Alice Furnace number one.
As he held onto a rope attached the old bell,
Jowers tripped and he and the bell tumbled into the
heat of the furnace. Catherine Wyndham wrote in The Ghost
and the Sloss Furnace that, according to one contemporary news report,
the intense heat reduced his body almost to ashes. A
(20:45):
piece of sheet iron was attached to a length of
gas pipe, and with that instrument, his head, bowels, two
hip bones, and a few ashes were fished out. Two
workmen who were on the bridge with him came very
near going in as well. Some believe that Jowers's ghost
haunts Sloss, the logic being that he migrated there after
(21:06):
Alice Furnaces closed down in nineteen twenty seven. It's claimed
that he's been seen walking the catwalk in the furnaces
He's also been seen performing his work tasks as he
would have in life, albeit not at Sloss. It's said
that in nineteen twenty seven, his son John Jowers saw
a figure of a man emerge from a cloud of
sparks at Sloss. Though the sparks would have been too
(21:29):
hot for an actual human to be that close, that
could very well have been the ghost of Theophilus Jowers.
Psychics have reported that the ghost of Jowers does not
want to move on and is happy at Sloss. Another popular,
likely untrue ghost story claims that a woman who was
pregnant out of wedlock threw herself into the furnaces sometime
(21:49):
around nineteen hundred. As is typical of these stories, it's
sometimes said to have taken place at Alice rather than Sloths,
or the two are conflated. It's claimed that at her
memorial service, a white deer appeared, representing her spirit, and
that this deer still appears whence Sloss hosts events. While
(22:09):
the ghost stories might not always correspond with history, there
are surely lots of ghosts at Sloss, noted is one
of the most haunted locations, if not the most haunted location,
in Alabama. There are lots of stories to tell. I've
investigated there, so I've got a few experiences to share,
and so does paranormal investigator Kevin Walden, who we will
(22:30):
be chatting with up next that is coming up after
the break. So I am now joined by paranormal investigator
Kevin Walden, who has spent a lot of time investigating
Sloss Furnaces. I've investigated there as well, so I think
(22:53):
together we can have a great conversation. So thanks for joining.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Us, Kevin, That's no problem. Thank you very much for
having me.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
To start off by saying that Sloss Furnaces is clearly
a very historical location. They still have a lot of
programs there and things, and you can visit them anytime.
They have kind of backed away from their ghosts and
their paranormal tours. And I do see kind of a
lot of locations, not a lot, but locations do occasionally
(23:20):
do that something happens, they get a bad taste in
their mouth about it, or they're concerned about, you know,
being disrespectful, and so I just want to send the
message out to Sloss and other historical locations that are
truly haunted, that think that it is disrespectful to pursue that.
Just know that there are very much ways to keep
your history accurate and very respectfully handle your hauntings and
(23:44):
at the same time bring in some extra revenue, which
I know a lot of these locations need. So if
any locations out there want to talk to me about it,
please reach out. I love helping and I think it
is a great opportunity, but I also completely understand when
places kind of veer away from it. So just know
that in the right hands, you all can do it.
So that being said, Kevin Slaus is wild. I have
(24:09):
investigated there a few times on and off camera and
have had some pretty amazing experiences there. So what drew
you to that hunt in the first place.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
We Slaus has just always kind of been there in
the background of Birmingham, a lot of history there, a
lot of tragic deaths unfortunately, and ever since I was
a child, I've always been kind of interested in, you know,
the spooky stuff and the kind of scary things. But
what actually got me to go there. We had to
do a presentation for one of our high school classes
(24:43):
and they said they wanted us to go out and
do something we've never done before. So me and my
group we decided, hey, let's go ghost hunting. Oddly enough,
there was a ghost hunter's marathon going on on Sci
Fi Channel. So I just sitting here talking to you
about this is kind of crazy and it's own.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Right, but it always comes around right, full circle.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, So we decided we were actually going to go
out to Old Bryce Sat in Tuscaloosa. It's this old
mental institution, looks straight out of a horror movie. So
we pack up, we head out there. We get about
four steps on the door and a state trooper shows up.
You know, we we were young and dumb, about sixteen
seventeen years old, but we were detained for about twenty minutes.
(25:30):
I think it was just trying to scare us more
than anything, but finally he let us go. We were
coming back from Tuscaloos to Birmingham and that's when we
saw it off in the distance, the towers of slush
just standing there staring back at us, and we were like,
you know what, let's give it another shot. Let's go here.
So we pull in and there's a security guard working
and as soon as we come walking up as you know,
(25:51):
what are you guys doing here? And We told him, man,
we're just trying to do this thing for school. We're
trying to get a good grade on it. He was like, well,
i'll tell you what you guys, come in, I'll give
you a free tour. So he walked us around and
then finally I was like, I'm gonna be leaving here
at about midnight. You guys got two hours to do
your thing. And then I'm out, wow, And I think
he was scared to be there really after midnight.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
That's so interesting. So you did it the right way.
You actually had permission. I think that that happened sometimes.
You know, when I was in high school, I'm totally
guilty of going places I should not have. And yeah,
and now I think it's great that it's so kind
of at the forefront because we can educate kids now, like, hey,
(26:35):
you don't have to break into these locations. There are
plenty of places for you to go with permission. And
so I'm glad that you guys had permission, and you know,
it's probably meant to be. So now that night, what happened.
Did you have any experiences?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, that being our first night ghost sunning, you know,
I think a lot of it was just us kind
of being paranoid, and you know, we're comparing it to
you know, movies in Hollywood and stuff like that, but
that doesn't take away from some of the crazy things
we did experience. That's where we learned the story.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Of slag right, which isn't necessarily true, but it's a
good story.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
At the time, it was definitely true in our minds. Yeah,
we were walking around. We had this one kid in
our class that we'd never really talked to, but once
he found out where we're ghost sonny, he was like,
you know, dude, I'm all in, let me go with you.
So he's walking around and he's got this audio recorder
and there's this big pipe next to him. He says, hey, man,
if he died in this pipe, let me know, and
(27:33):
he reaches his arm up in the pipe. Well, when
he pulls the recorder back out, he rewinds it hits play,
and this voice comes through right after he puts in
the pipe and it says creepy, but the way it
says it is also creepy, because it was.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Like creepy, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah. And another thing that happened with the audio recorder,
my cousin Sean had set it down. We were going
to leave it in one little spot by itself for
about an hour, just come back and listen to it,
which you know as well as I do. Listening back
to all that audio is painstaking.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But it really is. That's why voice activated recorders are
my friend. Now.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, but uh, he lays the recorder down and he says, Okay,
we're gonna leave this here for about an hour. We'll
come back and get it. So we walk off and
we get lost in there because Sloss is so huge
and there's so many twists and turns, and when we
finally find it, it was about an hour and a
half later. Well, he picks the recorder up. It stop
(28:30):
on it, he says, and cut. We go to a
Wanda back and I'm like, something's wrong with us. This
file isn't too long out here, so we can't play
on it. And it starts off with him saying, we're
gonna leave this recorder here. If anybody's here, let us know.
He sets it down. You hear this loud like whoosh
sound and then it goes directly into him saying and cut.
(28:54):
So to us, it's like something came up turn the
recorder off and when we were coming back to get it,
turned it back on.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I've had that happen before, and it's interesting. It's like, yeah,
we don't really want to talk to you. And I
mean at this time, they might have been having investigations
and you know, they start to get familiar with your
equipment and they're like, oh, this is that thing that
hears us click, it's turn it off. So not today,
But yeah, I mean I found that there. The spirits
(29:22):
kind of are They can either be very active or
sometimes just kind of shy.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I think we investigated there a total of seven times,
and most nights we'd have something happened, something crazy would happen.
I think there was only one night we went in
and the ghosts were like, man, we're tired of you guys,
get out of here.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know, did you have any experiences in that tunnel,
because I had a wild experience in the tunnel with
meat Loaf of all people, But did you have any
experiences in the tunnel.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We did have some strange things happening there. There was
one night there was four of us and we were
walking around. We go down into the tunnel. Well, as
we're walking along, we kind of split up. Two of
us go one way, two of us go the other.
And while we're standing there talking, all of a sudden,
from up above us, I hear what sounds like somebody
grabbing a metal chair and just sliding in across the
(30:12):
floor upstairs. M So me hostatly run towards it. I
go up there, don't see anything out of the ordinary.
But when I'm watching our footage back as we're going
down into the tunnel, there's two middle chairs sitting to
the side of the staircase. But when we come back up,
there's only one chair sitting there, and there was nobody
(30:33):
else there but us that night.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
That's wild. So that's the kind of thing when that happens,
like your whole body just kind of goes ooh okay, yeah,
you know, in that tunnel. So that was actually one
of the first places that I had a really good
experience with the laser grid. And so I was investigating
in the tunnel with Adam Barry and meet Loaf. Meatloaf
was a massive paranormal fan, and so I got to
(30:59):
investigate with him if times, and he just was like
very gung how he loved he loved it, and so
He sat in that tunnel with Adam and myself and
we had used the laser grid. We kind of aimed
it all the way down the tunnel and we watched
as a shadow kept kind of peeking out. And the
(31:21):
thing with the laser grid is when a shadow walks
into it, like a shadow figure, the little points just
disappear and you see the outline of a person. It's
not like they're reflecting, like if I stand in it,
I just have lasers all over me. But when a
shadow figure pops into it, like you see an outline
of them. And that was the first time I really
saw that. And Meat Love kept calling out to him
(31:42):
or Meat he liked to be called Meat, but he
kept calling out to this spirit and it would get
a little bit closer, its getting a little more comfortable,
and I swear we sat it felt like an hour
or two. We sat there because Meat did not want
to leave. We were just like watching this shadow go
(32:02):
back and forth. And yeah, it just seemed like someone
kind of shy and like not sure of us. That
was a really crazy experience.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Was that on the side next to the big machine
or the side with the staircase going up.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I think it was the side with the big machine,
if I remember correctly. So, I mean it's been a
long time, so.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
We ha'ds something similar. We didn't have the laser grid,
but we were down there one not I think it
might have been our second or third time there, and
we were on one end. I think we were on
the staircase side where it just goes right back up
into the main room up there, and it was real
dark back towards the machine. And my cousin Sean pointed
(32:46):
out first. He was like, I thought there's something looking
at us from behind that big machine. M hm. So
I looked down that way, and sure enough you could
see something just kind of poking its head around the machine,
looking at us. They go back over, come run the side,
peek at us. So I walk down that way, I
get to the machine. You can actually squeeze past that
(33:08):
machine and the tunnel continues on for miles back that way.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
That, And sure enough there was nothing back there. But
when I came back out and met back up with him,
I'll look back and you could see it again. This
thing just it's like I was watching us, just studying us,
you know.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, I felt like when we tried to get closer,
it would kind of back off, and so we just
kept our distance. And I swear I think Meat even
thought he knew his name, like he really felt as
though he was a conduit for the paranormal and that
he had like that he was psychic and he was
calling out to him. Gosh, I can't remember what it was,
but side note later on. So he had a really
(33:46):
good time investigating with Adam and me, And so at
the end of the night there, it was like three
thirty in the morning and we're doing one last run
way back like by the boiler room or something, and
our producer told us, he's like, don't tell meat Loaf
(34:06):
that you're still investigating. He's like, we need to start
wrapping up, and so don't tell him. And we're like okay,
So we quietly, we literally like were sneaking to the
boiler room so he wouldn't know, and we are doing
an EVP session. All of a sudden, the producer comes
around the corner and he's like, meat, little sound out
where you are. He thinks he's being funny. He's gonna
come scare you right now, so like and so he
(34:29):
comes barreling around the corner. He doesn't even have a
camera operator with him, and he's just like Boo Amy
and Adam and then so we literally had to sit
there and investigate with him until this sun was coming up.
The crew went into overtime. It was just so it
was the funniest So yeah, fun stories. But now, over
the time that you investigated there, what would you say
(34:50):
was like your most frightening experience.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Uh, definitely the most frightening. I think it was our filth.
There's a time there we decided we're going to start
doing you know, kind of isolation sessions around the planet.
So I decide I'll be enough. I was gonna go
down to the boiler room. So I make my way
down there. And this is way back when I had
(35:15):
that brick, no Kia phone. You know, we didn't have
the cell phones with the lights on or anything. So
I was like, I'm gonna leave my phone with you
guys because it creates this interference on the camera, So
leave that behind. The only light I had was on
my camera itself. So I make my way down into
the boiler room and I'm sitting there and I'm waiting.
(35:37):
I keep hearing things, you know, kind of off from
the distance. I'm thinking, maybe it's just the guys walking
around messing with me or something. Well, I'll pull up
audio recorder. I start recording, you know, if anybody's here,
give me a sign. And all of a sudden, it
just felt so different in there, like this heaviness just
set in. Well, all of a sudden, my audio recorder
(35:58):
just dies on me, and I'm like, okay, that's strange.
When they say no, my camera dies on me. So
I'm down there in pitch black, I can't see anything
at all, and all of a sudden, something slaps me
full force across the face. Oh no, yeah, And you know,
I'm sitting there in the dark, something slapping me, and
I'm just like, well, this is it. I've had a
(36:18):
good run, I guess. So the only thing I can
think to say is you know, I'm sorry. And I
start feeling my way out of the boiler room. I
had to work my way up the staircase, and when
I reached the top of the staircase, I go and
I find the other guys, and before I can even
tell them, I got slapped in the face. So, like,
you know, what happened? To you what happened to your face?
(36:39):
I had a handprint across my face and they took
some pictures of it. But what was strange about it
was if you go to touching, you know, espely when
you get slapped for it be kind of warm. When
they went to touch it was actually ice cold. And yeah.
The only thing I can relate that to would be
you know, a foreman come in seeing me sitting there
(37:01):
doing nothing and being like, hey, get back to work.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
P yeah, or just like we don't want you here,
you know that's I mean. So those are the kind
of experiences what people say is investigating dangerous overall. No,
even getting slapped by a ghost, which I've been shoved, pushed, whatever, scratched.
It's the reaction that you have, like thankfully you calmly
(37:26):
were like I'm sorry, and you left. But a lot
of people would run in the dark, probably run into
some sort of large metal object and fall down some stairs,
like because it's your instinct when that happens is flight.
Your body is like nope out. And then the other
lesson there, Kevin, is you always have a backup light always. No,
(37:50):
I've learned that lesson to that happened to us that
this is somewhere else. We're here as a mine of
all places. And the power went out when we were
under the ground, and I was like, oh my god,
worst nightmare. And I just had my phone light and
I was like, God, what happens if this doesn't work?
Speaker 1 (38:05):
True?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well that I mean that honestly though, that is scary
and that is a message, you know, So it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
What would you say is like, maybe this is kind
of the most common activity that people experience there.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Uh, definitely, you know, walking into a room, just filling
those unseen eyes on you and walking into cold spots.
I took my cousin there. She wanted to do a
report for school about my report for school, and you know,
I took her there. She'd never been there before. And
as soon as I walked into a room, I felt
the hairs on my arm starting to stand up. And
(38:42):
before I could say anything, she was like, man, I'm cold,
my hair on my arm is standing up. And just
hearing footsteps, a lot of footsteps, sounds of people still working.
That was one of the main things we've caught back
in the day, was s only somebody hammering something or
you know, it's a little along those lines.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
But yeah, I feel like there's a lot of residual
energy there just in general. You can definitely feel that,
and you're right, And I think that's one of the
things within investigating is to kind of listen to your body,
you know, what you're feeling, because that's usually a clue
that something could potentially be about to go down, like
if you you know, you start having that kind of
(39:24):
like hair on the back of your neck standing up,
or like feeling of being watched. Like there's a reason
why we feel that way. That's instinct and I definitely
experienced that there. So now, is there a place there
that you find Obviously the boiler room is high up,
but is there are there certain areas that you would
consider hot spots for people who are investigating.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Oh, definitely say the boiler room, and definitely the tunnel.
I feel like we got the most activity there, and
there used to be a boardwalk heading towards the tunnel.
I think they've cemented that in now to kind of
make it more of a regular like sidewalk tad, but
we'd hear all kind of stuff there. That first night
we went, it was middle of summer. Cricket's chirping like crazy,
(40:09):
and that guy that went with us, that we didn't
really know, he decided to start kind of provoking. And
for me, I've never really wanted to try provoking. It's
not really my thing, you know. But he starts just
calling it out. He's come on, I show yourself. We're
not scared to you do something. Do something. And all
of a sudden, just every single sound around us just disappeared,
(40:32):
like the crickets stopped. He couldn't hear any cars or anything,
and this cold gust wind blew in, and I remember
looking at my cousin Sean, I'm just like, well, we're
in a horror movie situation now. I think right after that,
we were walking along and I've got some video of
this up on my YouTube channel. We're walking along and
(40:54):
I'm panning towards one of the roofs of the one
of the buildings, and you see this figure standing on
top of it. Well, as we get a little bit closer,
this figure just kind of sinks into the building.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Wiles.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, it doesn't like jump off or anything like that.
It just kind of sinks into the building.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
That's really I actually, I do remember them mentioning that
people see figures up on like the catwalks and stuff
a lot, or like you know, walking in areas that
you definitely do not have access to, and even that
it's happened like during the day before too, where people
are just there touring and they're like, who's that and
you know there's not there's no live person in that area.
(41:34):
So where were you when you had the experience where
your friend started like trying to provoke? Was that outside?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Uh? Yes, that was outside on the board walk there.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Oh, that's right, you did mention that. So because I
had a really strange experience outside, I cannot remember if
this was on camera or not. You know, it kind
of all melds together. But I was walking kind of
by where you go into the tunnel and there's it
was like a gravel kind of roadway and I was walking,
you know, step crunch, crunch, crunch, and I heard steps
(42:07):
behind me and I thought it was someone trying to
scare me, like on the crew or something. And I
was like, I stopped and turned around and there's no
one and I'm like okay, So I start walking and
I hear it again, crunch, crunch, crunched and I'm like okay,
and I stopped that time, and it kept getting closer
to me, and I was just like, okay, I'm just
(42:27):
gonna walk really fast. I probably started whistling. I've mentioned
this before, but I have this theory that if you're whistling,
nothing bad can happen to you. And so, yeah, and
so I do remember that, and it was it was outside,
so I mean, obviously hants don't just stay indoors, but
it was that was a pretty wild experience. Okay, so
(42:50):
we have hot spots now. So you said you've investigated
there seven plus times. Does it sound like it does
seem like you've ever encountered like the same spirit more
than once.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
I would say, so that figure I was telling you
about down in the tone that we kind of peek
around the corner and watch us. I feel like we've
seen it two to three more times just around the
facility itself. One of those we're actually kind of in
the same place you were just talking about. And there's
like these little inlets that go in between like some
of the boilers there. Well, we were walking along and
(43:23):
I happen to look towards one of them, and same deal.
I see this thing kind of standing there, peeking around
the corner, watching us go over there, and it's nothing.
So I just I feel like maybe there's at least
one spirit there that's kind of like, let me see
what's going on here, you know, got us out or something.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah, now, what is your overall vibe there? Do you
feel like these spirits are intelligent and interactive or do
you think that it's mostly residual type activity.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Weird enough, I feel like there's sort of a mixture
of both. I feel like the majority is definitely residual,
just from the sounds and you know, people work and
all that stuff, people seeing people up on the furnaces,
you know, quote unquote working. But then you get those that,
like I said, they'll be watching you or when I
got slapped, that's definitely someone intelligent. So I feel like
(44:14):
it's a good mixture of both. Right.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Well, I mean, I'm really hoping we can get back
in there in an investigative fashion soon enough. But yeah,
now I find it super interesting. I'm glad you got
to investigate it so many times. It was one of
my favorite places to investigate, so it's kind of kind
of revisit it Now, you mentioned you have a YouTube channel.
Do you want to tell people where they can find
that and see some of your work.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Sure, it's it's on YouTube. The channel's called Alabama's Most
Haunted and basically we go out to some of the
most haunted places in Alabama once we get permission of courts.
I always remember that. Yeah, it's just Alabima's Most Haunted.
I think we've got about nine full length episodes up now,
and you know, we got a couple of little previews, trailers,
(44:58):
behind the scenes stuff. But there's a lot of haunted
places in Alabama that people just don't know about. You
got this Loss, which is famous for its hauntings, but
there's also so many other places that are just kind
of under the radar. Yeah, and kind of touching back
on what you saidwhere for us started, you know, it
was Loss not really wanting that kind of publicity anymore.
(45:22):
You know this, Several places will contact for the show
and they're like, I'm sorry, we don't want we don't
want to be affiliated with that kind of thing. We
don't want that kind of image.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, and I think it comes from a place of misunderstanding.
I think that there have been so many instances of
people going in and kind of disrespectfully handling a hunt,
and I think that at that point, you know, and
I can't blame them. A lot of these historical locations
are just like we don't even want to deal with this,
like this is. But I've worked with a lot of
(45:53):
places kind of hand in hand and helped them and
educated on like how to do these in a way
where it's a win win for everyone. And so, like
I said before, if anyone's listening and you want to
know how to do it, like, just feel free to
reach out to it. I love helping, and so if
there's any of those places you're trying to reach out
to and you want to send them my way, go
(46:13):
for it, because I think it's important. You know, it's
not just important for what we do, but like, what
about the ghosts. I think about that, What about the ghosts?
You know, Like I think about lost ghosts where everybody
was there talking to them all the time and suddenly
there's no one. They're probably they got used to the
attention now they're like hello, I do yeah. So but anyways,
(46:34):
I really thank you for taking the time. It's been fascinating,
and you know, hopefully our paths will cross in person soon.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
It sounds great. I look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
While in many ways loss Furnaces highlights a tragic part
of our history, it also stands a reminder of how
important it is we don't forget that history. Ghosts or not.
It's a very compelling place to visit it and I
highly recommend you do so if you ever find yourself
near Birmingham. I feel lucky to have investigated there when
(47:07):
I did, and I do so hope the ghosts have
found a way to reach out to others since, because,
as we all know, even if you avoid acknowledging a haunting,
that doesn't mean the ghosts go away. I'm Amy Brune
and this was Haunted Road. My fall tour has been
(47:32):
announced and I am going to a lot of places.
I have stopped in California, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina,
New York, Connecticut and more So. Please head to Amy
Brune dot com if you're interested in seeing me live
my life with the Afterlife True Tales of the Paranormal
tour is a great chance to talk all about the
(47:52):
hauntings I've encountered over my twenty plus years of paranormal investigating.
It's spooky and fun and perfect for fun, and I
can't wait for you to see it. Many of the
venues have a VIP meet and greet option two, which
are filling up fast. So again, head to Amy brune
dot com and click on the events and appearances paid
to get tickets today, Thank you friends. Haunted Road is
(48:20):
hosted and written by me Amy Bruney, with additional research
by Taylor Haggerdorn and Cassandra de Alba. This show is
edited and produced by rema El Kali, with supervising producer
Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. Haunted Road is a production of iHeartRadio and
(48:41):
Grim and Mild from Aaronmanke. Learn more about this show
over at Grimanmild dot com, and for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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